Los Angeles Juvenile Crimes and Dropout Rates

The link between Los Angeles juvenile crime and high school dropouts has been shown again and again, and a new study further confirms this terrible truth.

A new study recently released by The California Dropout Research Project has found that California high school students who fail to complete their educations cost the state roughly $1.1 billion every year in law enforcement and victims costs. The study, which was completed at the University of California at Santa Barbara, discovered a very close link between high school dropout rates and crimes committed, many times while the perpetrators are still minors. Fresno Police Chief Jerry Dyer summed up the report by saying, “The simple fact is that if kids aren’t in school, they’re much more likely to be on the streets causing trouble, engaging in criminal activities such as burglary, thefts, graffiti and arsons.” In Los Angeles, as many as one in every five students drops out of high school, and at some Los Angeles high schools fewer than half of students graduate as scheduled at the end of four years. The study further found that cutting the statewide dropout rate by half could potentially prevent 30,000 juvenile crimes from being committed by minors every year, as well as save the state as much as $550 million annually in law enforcement costs.